Now more than ever, there are many opportunities to create an online business. Six Fundamentals to consider before starting your online business
1. What is your purpose?
Before you begin working on your business, you need to ask yourself, “What is your purpose for beginning your business in the first place?”. Without a strong enough, why, your business is destined to fail. In fact, this is why 90% of new businesses fail when the owner is new. Starting a business online is not the same as a business not online but there are a few areas that intertwine. It is important to try and maximize the use of SEO, social media and other areas to build and grow your business.
2. What is your passion?
Now that you have decided you’re why it is time to do the thing that you are passionate about. This will be something that you would be willing to do for free. As long as you can do what you enjoy, you can do it for longer than something that you do not enjoy. Using the internet is a great way to research your passion and find a business like the one you are interested in working online and how they operate.
3. What are your goals?
When I ask you, what are your goals, I am actually asking you to think about, What are your financial goals? Depending on your goals, that will determine what type of online business you should be pursuing at this time. Not every online business can satisfy your financial goals because of the amount of ROI you will receive. ROI is the Return on Investment. This is how much you stand to earn from the money that you put into the business. Some businesses are scalable, meaning you can grow the business by simply spending more money.
Also if you are able to do so now, decide on if this business is something that you want to take part in for 5 years, 10 years, 30 years, or what. Knowing your end goal will help you to determine if the time is right for you to build that business. If you are looking for part-time work or for a temporary means to earn money but do not plan on taking part in the business long term, that is something you should consider. Your goals will drive not only your development of the business but every step of the progress that you will be taking along the way to fulfilling your purposes.
4. Who is your audience?
When picking an online business, it is best to consider the audience or the people you are trying to reach with your product or service. Knowing your target demographic is key to conversions or making money from the people that you enter. An example would be, if you are selling hunting equipment, you need to find people into outdoor sports. You would not invest your money in marketing to people who are not interested in hunting because when you present them with the product or service, they are less likely to convert to a sale or phone call.
Along with who is your audience, is how you will reach them? Whether you are going to use email marketing or social media marketing, how you reach your audience is just as important as the audience itself. In the beginning, if you have low funds available, it will be hard to spend a lot of money on marketing. It would be best to use social media and looking into forums and facebook groups to see if you can generate organic traffic to help you get free leads.
I would use facebook to begin because it will be open and easy to start. Focus on the essential aspects of starting your business in the beginning and cover the fundamentals, and afterward, you can worry about the inconsequential yet significant things like the Facebook cover photo size.
5. What is your service or product?
Even though this is the 5th item in the list, it is perhaps the very best and most important thing to consider when deciding to start an online business. If you have a dynamic product, the people will decide that your product is excellent and word of mouth will fuel the growth of your company. If you have an inferior product, no matter how well you advertise, your product is doomed to fail because you will not be able to retain customers so you will have many refunds, and your reputation will suffer thus limiting your ability to get new prospects.
Have an enticing website and use it to drive your traffic to your business. The very best way to do this is to rank high in the search engine using SEO or search engine optimization, having a high ranking in google.
6. Is it scaleable?
This goes back to the goals you set forth earlier. If your goal is long term success with your business, then it is best to have something scaleable. This means that you can grow your already successful business by only paying more for advertising. If you have a high conversion rate, you can certainly grow your business well. All in all, when deciding to start an online business, it is important to consider these six steps, but the most important thing to do is to take action. If you do not take action, no manner of preparation will get you to your goals.
